“In the middle ages, human skin was seen as a blanket stretched to cover a secret, inner life, writes Ayşegül Savaş. Reading White on White for me is like an outer skin which you open layer by layer as you read; gentle, mysterious and profound.”
—Marina Abramović
“Ayşegül Savaş’ White on White is marvelous, as elegant as an opaque sheet of ice that belies the swift and turbulent waters beneath.”
—Lauren Groff
“A haunting, irresistible novel. In Agnes, Savaş has created one of the great characters of contemporary literature. I loved this book for its depth and perception, for its beauty and eerie rhythms, but most of all for its wonderfully dream-like spell. It’s breathtaking.”
—Brandon Taylor
“Exerts the hypnotic pull of a mystery. Savaş’s prose is eerily beautiful, and she meets the famously difficult challenge of writing successfully about visual art and the creative process with aplomb. A superb novel by an exceptionally elegant, intelligent, and original writer.”
—Sigrid Nunez
“Savaş suggests that art reflects the spirit, that even without our knowledge, changes in the way we express ourselves mirror the condition of our souls . . .The entire world of “White on White” is selectively outlined. What of it exists exists in crisp, clean prose . . . this intangibility merely points us to the real site of the novel: the deeply psychological conversations with Agnes . . .The results of this thwarted intimacy move the story inexorably toward a finale that, for a book so invested in visual art, feels surprisingly most like an act of literary revenge.”
—Larissa Pham, New York Times Book Review
“Savaş’s restrained style is a statement in itself, minimalist on the surface but more textured than what first meets the eye. Through it, the author questions the validity of the self, whether fully clothed or supposedly exposed.”
– LA Times
“Savas elegantly explores loneliness in her second novel.”
– Washington Post
“Aysegül Savas’s novel, a high-minded, slow-moving thriller, asks whether art conceals or reveals its maker — and describes in lurid detail the horrors of creative work."
- Vulture
“A true portrait of artists young and old (…) Intrigue mixed with delight turns into something closer to horror as the painter's life — along with her marital drama and occasional madness — begins to overcome them both."
– Entertainment Weekly
“A unique and sober examination of friendship, art and the precarity inherent in all aspects of life, emotion and mind.”
– Ms. Magazine
“The fruit of all their listening is a sense of moral mission…One needs to listen deeply and artfully to notice the injustices hiding beneath.”
- Los Angeles Review of Books
“White on White goes deep into human experience, beautiful and fraught, delivering a renewed perception of what it means to be a person among other people.”
- Ploughshares
“Aysegül Savas delves into the very nature of art.”
–PopSugar
“The best books, naturally, build from a well-crafted and deliberately-chosen foundation to expand into something, as it were, novel — and the trouble for the author comes in fitting herself into a cogent tradition while, also, expressing something new and true to her own vision. These qualities of originality and classicality . . . are abundantly found in Ayşegül Savaş’ bright, perspicacious, and elegant White on White.”
– Chicago Review of Books
“Savas’s novel seems to take inspiration from Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy, books that consist of a series of recounted conversations with strangers . . . The student is less a character than an apparatus of observation; she is Emerson’s transparent eyeball, only trained on a single human subject rather than the entirety of the world . . . an ambitious palette.”
– New York Times
“Despite the thriller-ish underpinning of the novel and the propulsive unfolding of the relationship at the book’s heart, Savaş’s graceful and intellectual prose is the star of the show here. It makes air-light what might otherwise be a novel ponderous with weighty questions: What is the nature of art? Does it reveal or conceal? What is the nature of human connection? . . . . Like a prism, this novel brilliantly illuminates the human spectrum of connection and longing.”
—Kirkus, STARRED review
“Alluring… [T]he account of the perfect Agnes’s slow crumbling builds to an unsettling conclusion. Fans of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy will appreciate this striking portrait.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Savaş, impressively, has at once deposited her readers in the literary equivalent of a clean room — the prose is unaffected, straightforward, easily graceful — and dumped us into a fog . . . Much of the power of White on White comes from Savas’ excellent command of the slowly darkening mood. ”
–On The Seawall
“An elegantly stark character study . . . a haunting cautionary tale."
– Christian Science Monitor
“Savaş expertly crafts another novel that will attract readers who seek well-written, character-driven fiction.”
—Booklist
“How exhilarating to be swept off my feet once more, torn between wanting to savor every sentence while also wishing to rush through to the end! It is writing that I devoured in a few sittings and then returned to over and over again . . . I cannot wait to press both of Ayşegül Savaş’s novels into everyone’s hands.”
- Sanaë Lemoine, Electric Literature
“The story at the heart of Ayşegül Savaş’s White on White is— like the title— subtly camouflaged. Savaş’s characters watch each other as they avoid themselves, in a slow, acute and obliterating double portrait." —Leanne Shapton
“I read it in a day and slid into its world with total delight and admiration. It’s a deeply humane, quietly devastating, mesmerisingly beautiful masterpiece.”
—Olivia Sudjic
“Terse, slender and exquisite, like a finely-wrought figurine carved in bone, WHITE ON WHITE spins its tale of doubles, womanhood and power with the magnetic pull of a thriller, while refusing to settle for easy resolution. I loved its quiet, observant wisdom; its willingness to look for depth underneath shiny surfaces.”
—Livia Franchini
“I was riveted by it. The delicate restraint of the language just adds to its power.”
—Celia Paul